It is already quite obvious that all Radeon R9 290X graphics cards at launch will be based on AMD's reference design as partners did not get either the green light from AMD or the final design in order to make their own custom designs. According to a few sources that we had a chance to talk to, custom R9 290 series graphics cards could come in late November.

Some of our sources did mention that it will be a race, as all partners will start making custom graphics cards at the same time. Of course, the big ones like Sapphire, Asus, MSI, Gigabyte and others will probably be a tad bit faster than small AMD AIB partners and come up with their own solution a bit earlier.

According to a few details that we managed to gather, most are aiming at mid- to end of November but in the end it is important to have those graphics cards on retail/e-tail shelves in time for the Christmas shopping spree.

It is not a good day to be in the Sony PlayStation 3 security department, as a new nightmare hack has apparently been released for the PS3. This time around it will feature custom PS3 firmware, along with publication of the LV0 decryption keys, which some in the hacking community speculate blows the entire system wide open for more hacking and development.

We have seen a number of PS3 hacks since the system’s release and we have seen Sony’s attempts at plugging the holes, which have met with mixed results. The fact that the LV0 decryption keys have been released presents a serious problem for Sony, as this means that the 4.30 update can be decrypted with no problem.

Sony’s options to battle these developments are limited. We do expect Sony to respond quickly, but they will want to think about what is the best way to deal with this latest hack.

Richard Surroz, a.k.a. Darth Beavis, has built a custom Duke Nukem themed case for Nvidia and, as you can see, the case is really something. The companies that contributed to the project with their gear are Danger Den, EVGA, Crucial, Silverstone, Frozen CPU, and Asus.

The rig uses two EVGA’s watercooled GTX 580 cards, Silverstone’s 1500W PSU, Asus’ 3D displays, Danger Den’s cooling system, Crucial’s RAM, etc. That the guys tried really hard to evoke those fond Duke memories is evident from the gun in the middle, and they made sure it rotates. Enough talk, here’s some pictures.